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How to Prepare for the USA Pluto Return

In this episode of the Astrology Hub Podcast, Astrologer Rick Levine and Joe Santos discuss “The US Pluto Return …or not?”

You’ll learn…

• • Alternative methods of calculating the USA Pluto Return
  • The difference between the sidereal and tropical zodiac
  • About the Pluto archetype and its function
  • How to manage your life through these heavily Plutonic times
  • Why this Venus and Pluto conjunction is noteworthy

✨ Time Stamps

0:00 Intro

1:40 The USA Pluto Return

08:39 The Precession of the Equinoxes

17:32 Tropical vs Sidereal Astrology

37:15 How to Prepare for the Pluto Return

42:07 What Music Teaches Us About Astrology

56:19 How can a Country Process a Transit

1:05:00 Pluto and Venus conjunction – February 2022

1:11:24 The Function of a Pluto Transit

1:22:50 What we can Learn from Yoga

1:25:01 Outro

Transcript

This transcript is automatically generated. Some miswording might be present.

Amanda Pua Walsh 0:03
Welcome to the Cosmic Connection. This is your place to explore the beauty and order of the cosmos and your connection to it all. My name is Amanda Pua Walsh and I’m the founder of astrology head.

Rick Levine 0:13
And I’m Merlin living your cosmic navigator.

Amanda Pua Walsh 0:16
Now let’s dive in.

Rick Levine 0:17
Let’s do it

Joe G. Santos 0:31
well, hello, hello, everyone. Hi, Rick. Well, welcome to the Cosmic Connection, everyone. I’m obviously not Amanda Pua. Walsh, but

Rick Levine 0:44
it’s not that obvious at all.

Joe G. Santos 0:48
Well, I’ll try to bring a wig next time.

Rick Levine 0:53
We do we want to tell anyone why you’ve taken over astrology hub and abducted Amanda and, and is holding her ransom.

Joe G. Santos 1:02
I actually am not sure why I’m taking over I just said yes.

But yes, I’m here. And I’m excited to connect with you all. I hope that I do a good job subbing for Amanda. And just a little bit about myself, just to introduce myself so that you guys have never seen me before. I am part of the Astrology Hub’s. Tech team. I am an electional. And horary astrologer and a sound engineer. And yes, that’s pretty much all I did.

Thank you, everybody for being here with me. And thank you, Rick, for letting me do this.

Rick Levine 1:40
Well, cool. So we we are here today, I understand. To talk about Pluto.

Joe G. Santos 1:49
Yes, and I’m so excited to talk about Pluto. Because Pluto is one of the planets in astrology that I still don’t understand too much. Because I started with traditional astrology. So Pluto is never mentioned. So it’s nice to be here and learn. And I also didn’t get to watch the Pluto return webinar that you were in, that people can actually still buy.

Oh, Mary. Hello, thanks for the welcome.

Oh, yeah, people can still buy it the Pluto return webinar that you were in. And because I didn’t get to watch it. I don’t think I was even working for the astrology hub yet. When it came out. I’m just glad that I get to hear firsthand from you your thoughts on the notorious Pluto return?

Rick Levine 2:31
Well, you know I have,

I have interesting thoughts on it. Because

obviously, we are going through a plutonic period. And we’ll swing back to that in a little bit. But I’m not convinced that we’re having a Pluto return. And I said that on the panel discussion, and didn’t take it very far. And wasn’t saying that to diss or to

to make less of anything that anyone was saying. But let me before we get started, let me just throw a little bit of what’s the saying a spanner which I think is a a British term for a monkey wrench to throw a spanner in the works or to throw a monkey wrench in the works. And I think those mean the good workings are the gear actions of a big machine. So I’m gonna throw I’m gonna throw a wrench into the gears.

NASA unequivocably says on its website, and anyone can go check this just Google NASA Pluto orbit, and you will learn that it takes Pluto 248 years to go around the sun. Pluto Pluto cycle is 248 years like a Saturn cycle is 29 and a half, like a Uranus cycle is 84 like a lunar cycle is you know, 29 days like a solar, you know those those are things that we know.

So

if we’re looking at the Pluto return for the birth of the United States, which states which of which there are many different charts, but one of the two most widely used charts may be the most widely used chart is the chart for the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the afternoon of July 4 1776.

Now, I did not employ any high level calculus or bizarre functions when I took 1776 and added 248 to it because that’s how long it takes Pluto to go around the sun once According to NASA, and 1776 plus 248 equals 2024.

Not 2022 Okay, what’s the problem?

Joe G. Santos 4:59
Well

We’re two years behind.

Rick Levine 5:03
Well, we are. And, and it’s an interesting problem. I know the why of the problem. And I’m going to share that with you.

I’ve had discussions with other people about this. It’s something that I’m going to be watching. And it’s actually sent me down a little bit of

a little bit of a rabbit hole. That’s got me thinking about some other things. And so even though you thought you were tuning into a what’s happening, while the United States has this Pluto return, we’re taking a little bit of a detour on the way, because we’re missing something, something’s not something’s not right. We’re only at 246 years. And we’re saying that Pluto returns. Now this month, February is when is when it happens. And the problem here is actually the difference between tropical sidereal astrology, the problem has to do with what’s called the precession of the equinox. Many of you immediately know what I’m talking about, and can probably reason very quickly as to as to where I’m going with all of this. But I want to take the short way there. I want to take the longer way there so that people can can grasp this. Stephanie just wrote, Pluto orbits the Earth on an ecliptic, and it’s slightly different in yours. That’s not the reason Roberta what you’re saying is true. But this has nothing to do with the tilt of Pluto’s orbit away from the ecliptic, not the elliptic the ecliptic, which is the, which is the plane that is determined by the earth moving around the sun that makes like a Frisbee. And if you extend that out, or in all directions, that makes the plane of the ecliptic. And yes, planets move above and below the ecliptic, as they’re going around. Many of them come up on one side and down on the other on a very regular basis. But that’s not the issue of what we’re talking about here.

Joe G. Santos 7:20
Right? Can I ask a question?

Rick Levine 7:24
You’re the moderator, you get interrupt more than I get.

Although I’m the Aries, and you’re going to have to over stomp me in order to stop me from?

Joe G. Santos 7:35
Well, I’m just a simple cancer. I’ll try.

But my question was, even though we we could be those two years off? Would we still technically be with an orb? Or?

Rick Levine 7:49
Yeah, yeah. And that’s where we’re going with this. I mean, the discussion that we’ll have in a bit will be the fact that we can already see, you know, the ramifications, the consequences, the the significations the events all around us, that are part of this, however,

the question of when is exact is still

Yeah, and Stephanie says the same thing.

But but it’s not quite just sidereal versus tropical. And and I’m gonna get a little mathy on you here. But but not very. But it’s important that we do this. Because otherwise we’ll never quite get it right. So the precession of the equinox means that every year at the at the equinoxes, the spring vernal equinox, and the autumnal equinox, depending upon whether we’re north or south latitude. At the equinoxes, we make a measurement and we know those are exactly the equinoxes because there’s 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness.

The precession of the equinox means that the earth if you spin a top,

and you spin it as best you can, one direction, as it slows down, it begins to wobble, but it wobbles backwards to the direction you spin it until it just falls over.

Backward wobbling is called precession, or precessive movement.

Because if you progress, you’re moving in the same direction. precess means to move backwards.

So So what that means is that every year on the first day of spring, at the moment, of the Spring Equinox here in the north or the autumnal equinox in the south, we reset

Set Aries to be zero degrees of the zodiac. That’s what the tropical zodiac is, it’s based upon the seasons, the equinox beginning of spring.

Every year at the beginning of spring, if we do a sighting to where the stars are, every year, it will look like the stars slipped back 1/72 of a degree, almost negligible. But that means one degree every 72 years. And that also, you know, is, you know, is is almost negligible. But once we take that 1/72 of a degree every 72 years, and we say over the course of a couple of 1000 years, that slips back 30 degrees or one whole sign, or for that matter, over the course of some 26,000 years, that will make one complete slippage all the way around.

This is the determination factor of what we call ages in astrology, right? The age of Aries would be when the spring equinox occurs when the air when zero degrees of Aries is is at the beginning is in effect rising at the beginning of the spring equinox.

We the equinox precesses though backwards. So from the age of Aries, we then go into the Age of Pisces, it goes backwards because the top is spinning backwards. It looks like the planets, which actually make it look like the planets are moving backwards. But the planets if they’re holding their own space, actually move forward at the degree of the of the precession. We’ll get back to that in just a moment. So

and this, of course, was the reason why in the 1500s Pope Gregory the 13th

added actually,

actually, he yeah added 10 days or 11 days into the calendar. Because Easter, which is supposed to be a holiday related to spring, because of the precession of the equinox. March basically was slipping back into it further and further into the winter. And so the correction factor basically got the calendar, right. And it re adjusted the leap years, which used to be a leap year was every fourth year. But now there is no leap year on a century.

Unless it’s divisible by 400. Like the year 2000 was

Joe G. Santos 13:11
Oh, wow.

Rick Levine 13:14
So so the calendar itself had to be adjusted, because it was no longer pinned to the seasons. Now what the hell does this have to do with Pluto?

It’s actually quite simple and quite interesting. On July 4 1776, the United States Birth Chart had Pluto at 27 degrees and 33 minutes

27 degrees of Capricorn and 33 minutes about 27 and a half degrees of Capricorn, which

is where Pluto will be on February 20. Where just less than two weeks away from Pluto in the sky being at 27 degrees Capricorn 33 minutes for the first time in 200. And and we’re almost doing 50 years. But here’s the problem.

NASA tells us that it takes Pluto 248 years to go around the sun once 248 years is the annual cycle, I’m sorry, is the cycle of the Sun in year is the cycle of Pluto in years. Right? Just like it takes the Earth one year to go around the sun. It takes Pluto 248 years you can google Pluto orbit NASA and you can get the information right from them.

So we have the birth of the United States of America with Pluto at 27 degrees Capricorn 33 minutes and that was on July 4 1776. You add 248

because that’s how long it takes Pluto to go around once, and you get to 2024. Pluto will not be returning to where it was

when

the Declaration of Independence was signed until until 20, January of 2020, actually February of 2024. So what’s the difference? The difference is that because of precession, which is one degree every 72 years,

in the time that it takes Pluto to go around the sun once, which is 248 years,

we know that

that that means that 3.4 degrees have been lost to precession. Because one degree

the precession is one degree every 72 years, and therefore, it’s almost three and a half degrees in in 248 years. If you just round some of this off 70 degrees, seven times three is 21. It would have been 370 degree chunks in 210 years. Now we’re at about three and a half, three and a half degrees of precession. What that means is that sidereally, if we were to look at where Pluto is in the sky, for real Pluto is at zero degrees Aquarius 58 minutes. Why do I know that because I take 27 degrees of Aquarius 27 degrees of Capricorn, and 33 minutes.

And we know that the precession has been 3.42 degrees.

So 27 plus three degrees is zero. So that brings us to zero degrees of Aquarius from 27 Capricorn plus re 20 720-829-3030 Zero degrees of the next sign. So we’re at 30 degrees of Capricorn and 33 minutes. But the point four two, we convert that point for two turns out to be 25 minutes. If it was point five, it would be 30 minutes, because 30 minutes is half, you know the whole degree there 60 degrees in a minute. Like I said, this is the most mathy that we’re going to get. And if any of this is going over your head, trust me, he said.

Joe G. Santos 17:32
Wait, so are you saying that the US is Pluto is really an Aquarius, as opposed to?

Rick Levine 17:37
Well, I’m just saying I’m saying that Psy D really if we were to look in the sky, we would not see Pluto at 27 degrees and 33 minutes of Capricorn. If we were to look today, we would see it at zero degrees, 58 minutes of zero degrees of Aquarius, and 58 minutes almost one degree of Aquarius, three and a half degrees away from where we’re from, from where it is tropically the tropical degree is the same. And this is confusing. And quite frankly, I thought I completely understood. You know tropical versus sidereal. And I really think I do but I’m I’m I’m a bit hesitant to say that just because Pluto is back at the same degree

that it has returned to where it was because it hasn’t three degrees away.

And the very simple mathematics on all of this

is that is that

Unknown Speaker 18:45
Pluto in natally in the US chart is at 23 degrees 27 degrees Capricorn 33 minutes. It will reach there on February 20. It reaches 27 degrees of Capricorn in 33 minutes, and then it goes retrograde. And it goes over that same point again on July 11. That’s this summer 2022. Then it turns direct and it goes over that same point again on December 28 of 2022. Next year, on March 23. Pluto goes into Capricorn but it doesn’t quite reach that zero degree 58 minute. It Retrogrades in May and going into

Joe G. Santos 19:33
Did you say Capricorn or Aquarius?

Rick Levine 19:37
I’m sorry.

Pluto goes into Aquarius on March 23 2023. And it doesn’t quite reach the actual degree of zero Aquarius I meant 58 minutes. So it’s not quite there. It turns

retrograde and it goes back

into Capricorn

in May,

Unknown Speaker 20:12
and then it goes back into Aquarius on January 22 2024. And it reaches that zero degree of Aquarius 58 minutes, which is the degree of the unprocessed. It’s the side Dariel degree, if you will, the star degree the actual degree of Pluto on February 20 2024. And it will with three times because the direct retrograde direct, it’ll go retrograde over that point in July of 2024. It goes actually back into Capricorn and 2024 Just for a touch back into Aquarius and in the goes back into Capricorn in September of 2024 goes back into Aquarius in November. And then the third and final return to the actual place where Pluto is, is on is on December 28 2024.

Joe G. Santos 21:24
Right

Rick Levine 21:25
now, what we have here is really two separate,

intertwined.

intertwined sets of dates. And I am not here to say that one doesn’t work and the other does. They’re close enough that, you know with the Saturn Return, if Saturn’s within a degree or two, or even three, we’re already feeling the effects of that return, right? Pluto being a much, much slower cycle that we’re certainly in orb Davis says you’re losing me. Let me see if I can just say this again in a different way. That just so that that that everyone can be on board.

The difference between tropical and sidereal astrology as Hopefully, most if not all astrologers know is that when we say a planet is is that 10 degrees of of Gemini. That doesn’t mean that it’s in the constellation of Gemini. Because the astrology that we do is seasonal astrology, or tropical astrology. the Tropic of Cancer in Capricorn are the to the highest and the lowest point that the Sun reaches in the sky. Because of the Earth’s tilt. You know, the seasons are not determined by how close or far away The Earth is from the sun.

In fact, in the northern hemisphere, the Earth is closer to the sun in winter than it is in summer. But the earth is tilting toward the sun. So we get more direct sun so it’s warmer.

But the there’s two different zodiacs. One is the tropical zodiac that is used by modern Western astrologers, which is the seasonal zodiac, which is based upon the resetting of zero degrees of Aries every year at the beginning the first moment of spring,

which is why we call it the tropical zodiac because on because the seasons are determined. As the sun moves in its declination up and down above and below the ecliptic. It reaches the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. The Solstice is and it’s on the equator, the equinox equator on the on the equinoxes. And so what I’m saying here is normally in a given lifetime, this precession, we’re not necessarily concerned with it, because it’s only one degree every 72 years.

So in other words, at your Saturn Return at age 29 and a half, it’s less than a half a degree. And so it’s just it’s kind of there. Now the question is on these longer term cycles. What’s important? Is it the return to the tropical which is what we’re all using? When we talk about the return of Pluto to 27 degrees 33 minutes, or do we need to take something into consideration

that says that’s not where Pluto is? Because of the precession of the equinox.

Excuse me because

precession of the equinox Pluto is actually physically at zero degrees Aquarius 58 minutes. Right? And just one of the things, Joe. And so here, it may just be a question of, of languaging because Pluto is not returning to where it was, it’s returning to where we would map it, if we were using this shifting Zodiac that we use to keep the seasons in line with the stars.

Joe G. Santos 25:35
Right, and the question that I had was that you mentioned the Saturn Return. So would that be? Would you apply that same sort of technique to a Saturn Return as well? Or is it really different because of how much time Pluto takes to actually travel? You’ve asked a very good question, and I don’t have an answer. I do know that in solar fire, which is the chart calculation program that that I use.

Rick Levine 26:02
I do know that when you calculate your solar return, there’s many astrologers who use and it’s a simple box check in solar fire, that if you want to calculate your solar return, do you want to use the processed position? Or the tropical position? I’ve always used the tropical position. Right? Um, so you know, it’s, again, the 29 and a half degree would be accurate for the Saturn Return.

If we’re using the tropical points, but maybe that would make it closer to 30 years, if we were using this ideal. I’m not sure I’m not. And I have talked to a couple of people about this. And I’ve got mixed responses. I’m early in my research, when Amanda said that, you know, asked me if I would do today, the Pluto return. I said I’d rather not because I’m not convinced. And I haven’t really completed my research. And I told her what I was kind of thinking about. Then she said, Well, why don’t you just share that? And so I am

I know that when I talked with, with Brett Joseph with Gemini bread, right? Who is one of my go to people when when I’m talking about celestial mechanics, you know, he basically tried to settle me down and said, No, I’m just getting distracted. It’s a tropical return. And that’s what we do. And the other thing is fictitious.

I’m not saying he’s wrong, I just don’t believe him.

I need I need to do more research. And I’m thinking that we all do.

Because I mean, I’m not going to shift and become a sidereal astrologer. But if anything, we just need to be aware. And this is really the bottom line of all of this, that in 246 years, Pluto is not returning to where it was.

Unknown Speaker 28:02
That takes 248 years.

Joe G. Santos 28:05
Right

Rick Levine 28:05
we can give it another name, we can call it a tropical Pluto return. But we need that word in there because it’s not a Pluto return. Pluto is a 248 year cycle. It’s two years different than what we’re looking at here, then so

Unknown Speaker 28:25
yeah, Stephanie, I’m sorry if I’m over complicating it. But it’s something that I think that we need to do some research on. And enough said there.

Joe G. Santos 28:35
And maybe a good question would be then like, what would be the difference between both of them? I guess, like other than the timing of course, but one.

Rick Levine 28:44
Ultimately, I think ultimately, we’re looking at plutonic stuff happening right now I’m not doing that at all at all. But then again, we were looking at plutonic stuff happening a year or two ago. Even when Saturn joined Pluto back in January of 2020. We were already looking at plutonic stuff. Anyone who has done both Vedic and

Jyotish Vedic Astrology. And modern Western astrology side by side note knows that it’s really interesting because with totally different symbol sets, they both work.

Unknown Speaker 29:21
And so I’m just bringing this out into discussion, because there’s so many people who are calling this a Pluto return. And Pluto is not it can’t be returning to where it was, because that’s 248 years. And that is 2020 for that right

Joe G. Santos 29:41
Now, I guess then, taking Pluto aside if we’re just to look at Tropical versus Sidereal to try and understand, like which one is the best which one we want to go with or anything like that? What would you say is like the symbolic difference between both of them like what would a tropical placement tell you?

Rick Levine 30:00
That aside, Dario doesn’t talk or vice versa. Yeah, I think that, that Albert Einstein very clearly explained that time and space are interrelated

and that they are fluid, and that you need to pick a fixed point of reference. And that once you pick a point of reference and everything works to that, then then then your cool

sidereal astrology picks the stars to be the fixed point of reference. But what happens is, over the years in the centuries, the seasons become unhinged from the zodiac. Aries is no longer the beginning of spring. Aries is then in winter, and then it’s an autumn and then it’s in mid summer, it goes backwards over that 26,000 year cycle. So to me, side, aerial astrology is a spatial reference, right? And tropical astrology is a temporal reference, which one is right or better, they’re both right, or neither of them is fully right, because you can’t map both of them at the same time. Because it’s like that particle wave thing you can’t know both at the same moment, you can either know one or the other. And so from that standpoint,

either of them is right, as long as you pick one. And what’s the difference? I think this and I’ve talked with many Vedic astrologers, and many agree, there are many people who have very different opinions. But um, but Western tropical astrology using the tropical zodiac. It’s like home, it’s like home base. It’s like where we are. And it has that feeling of being, you know, earth and our life centered. Whereas the Vedic tradition is more oriented toward the soul. It’s a bit more cosmic, if you will. And it’s a little bit detached or a lot detached from the actual seasons themselves. Which one’s more accurate? I don’t, I don’t think you can go there. I think that they are both the I think it’s the practitioner that makes it accurate or not both system, obviously, are valuable. Right. And then do you would you do you think it would be fair to say that, like the tropical return, since we’re talking about like space is a more like tangible? Like we feel it, we see it, it’s like right there. Souter and the side Dariel can be a little bit more of like a spiritual experience, or maybe more of like,

Joe G. Santos 32:44
I guess not necessarily, necessarily spiritual, but less about, like the actual space and your actual resources and your day to day life. And more about like the grand schemes. And this, this is a question, obviously, hypothetical, I don’t expect you to have the answer. But what would you say to that?

Rick Levine 33:03
I do have an answer. And that is, I don’t know.

That’s fair. As an astrologer, I’m not afraid to say I don’t know. But I’m also not afraid to say, I know. And I know that it takes Pluto 248 years to run once. So I know this is not Pluto, returning to where it was. It’s Pluto returning to something. But it brings into question so much else of what we do. Remember people before this generation didn’t have this kind of issue, because they didn’t have the accuracy of the computers that we have. And so does this mean that we need to take a look at correcting for other transits? Maybe, but maybe not. I’ll watch them. I mean, I’m, I’m going to watch this Pluto thing unfold, then we’ll see. We’ll see what it does. In the meantime, you know, anyone who’s had Pluto, transiting Pluto conjunct an angle of their chart, or a luminary in particular, or hair or square or a pose, or all of those knows that the date, the exact date of that conjunction square opposition was relatively unimportant when compared to that whole two to three or four year sweep of Pluto going through that area, that it’s not about a specific single event. Well, sometimes it’s event. And by the way, Cheryl says this is why Rick Tarnas focuses on the aspects rather than the sine of the planet. Because the aspects do not change when you’re using whether you’re using soy dairy or tropical. That is absolutely true. Thank you Cheryl and Itu. Um, but you see, the thing is that, um,

that when in an interview

vitual Pluto transit, I always get the feeling let’s say you’re having Pluto. Let’s say you have a Capricorn moon, and Pluto has been in Capricorn forever. Well, not really. It’s moving through Capricorn.

Joe G. Santos 35:12
I mean, the Pluto return supposed to be where my descendant is , and opposing my Sun. So there we go,

Rick Levine 35:19
And opposing your sun. So, so with a transit with Pluto in an opposition conjunction, or square, one might find the date. And one might go a year or two before because Pluto moves not only so slowly, but it’s direct retrograde, it can come up and hit come within

15 or 20 minutes a half a degree of being exact, and not come to the exact until a year and a half later after a retrograde and another direct so that Pluto moves slowly enough that it’s often felt a year or two coming a year or two when it’s exact. Because Pluto and Neptune sometimes move slow enough and can grab a planet where instead of getting a direct retrograde direct or 123, you can actually get a direct, retrograde, direct retrograde direct and you have five hits on a transiting planet, you know, and that’s extended even further. And then you still have another couple of years going. So we’re looking at extended period of time. So all I’m saying is that we are already in this period of time. But I think it’s more than an academic question as to when is the Pluto return? I don’t have the answer. But I think history will help us unfold this. And know that I will be going back with my clients and I will begin begin looking at slower moving planets, like Uranus, Neptune is tough because often the effects of Neptune are less urgent and immediate than the effects of transiting Saturn or Uranus. But I will look at these and see whether there’s something else going on. Maybe there is maybe there isn’t.

Joe G. Santos 37:15
Right. And I saw in the comments. Somebody asked like how can we prepare for this? And I think that’s a really good question. Because now since we’re not so much worried about like the exact date, we’re really worried about like, well, not worried we’re just focusing on like a long span of years. We’re already in it. So we’ve already been working with it, we’re already dealing with it. So

I guess it’s less of a question of how we prepare for it, or more so of like, how do we keep going with this?

Rick Levine 37:44
Alright, so in preparing for it, I would say that we prepare for a Pluto transit like we prepare for our colonoscopy.

We want to be as clear and empty as we can be.

No, it’s true. Because, you know,

I and many of my associates and friends I don’t know how far this extends in the astrology world. But amongst my people, we often refer to Pluto as the roto rooter guy. Nice.

No, Pluto’s gonna come in, and he’s and it he Pluto is going to get get any shit that’s buried out into the open. That’s what Pluto’s job is, as lord of the underworld. When we have a Pluto transit, he’s going to take that shit that’s hidden, and it’s going to bring it out into the open.

Joe G. Santos 38:43
Totally.

Rick Levine 38:45
And, of course, it’s a union concept that when things are in the unconscious, were at their whim. But when things are conscious, it’s not like we immediately can control it, but we can work with it and learn how to integrate it in a way that that has that it has less power than it does than it did when it was unconscious. And that’s how do we work with this is we offer Pluto, no resistance to bringing the things out that that Pluto is going to bring out because the more we go into denial, the more we cleanse, the more we bury stuff, the the the deeper we go get heavy machinery and bury everything and other 40 or 100 feet below Pluto care Pluto, the roto rooter will find it and get it out into the open. And so from that standpoint,

if you want to just talk about ease or difficulty of a transit Pluto is going to get harder the more you fight it and hold on to what you thought your identity was. Or or

or the more you fight or hold out, have the awareness of who you really are, and bury that because of you want to present who you think you should be, rather than who you really are. So how do we prepare for it? Psychotherapy

not tongue in cheek, but any form of yoga, any form of working with the energies to strengthen ourselves, but also with humility. Pluto doesn’t like it when we take Pluto’s power and apply it for personal wealth. And then for that, with Pluto stuff, it’s important to remember that we’re working for the good of all, it’s the Mr. Spock, you know, on the Star Trek’s you know, the good of the many outweighs the needs of the few, or the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And I think these are all important things for Pluto to be working with. It’s easy with Pluto to become fearful, build boundaries, become paranoid, build walls. And I think that the way we work with Pluto, is we become aware of those things in our lives. And when Pluto shines the light somewhere into the darkness, rather than trying to break all the lights and crawl deeper and all become ostriches and dig our heads in the sand, which things really do. But rather than doing that, that we go, ah, Pluto, thank you. It’s so good to see you. You know, here’s what I think you need to see. And maybe this is what I never told my dad, I need to bring this out in the open and in this relationship and you start bringing things out that before were hidden, not just in relationships or intimate relationships, but in all aspects of your life. It’s Joseph Campbell wrote, The cave we fear has our greatest treasures. And, and that’s basically a very plutonic concept.

Joe G. Santos 42:07
Yeah, that’s giving me honestly not to make this about myself. But that’s giving me a war flashbacks. Because like I said, Pluto is like, right or my descendant and this whole ordeal is happening like that. And what had happened I wasn’t even like an astrologer either time. But I was just about to open a studio to start being like full time sound engineer. And that’s what was I got what I was gonna do. I was living in Toronto and the city grand old time. And then Pluto came through the pandemic came and then I had to literally shut down the studio that I had just bought after a month and that was totally terrible. And then in the meanwhile, I’m like talking to astrology, with all my friends, and they’re always like, you should become an astrologer. You should do this, like you don’t shut up about it. Like, what do you do? And what happened is that that having the studio actually shut down actually gave me the opportunity to be like, Oh, this astrology thing is like very real. And I really do like it and I will pursue it. And through that I decided to just give up on music and I’m like, I’m not gonna do music anymore. I’m now an astrologer. And then Pluto Retrogrades comes back in. And then I become an astrologer who also does music.

Rick Levine 43:21
Well, I got some bad news for you, dude. Astrology is music.

Joe G. Santos 43:28
That is true. That’s what I’m finding out

Rick Levine 43:31
that when Pythagoras , and Johannes Kepler referred to the music of the spheres, they we’re not talking in metaphor. We normally hear music through our ears. But what we’re hearing is frequency vibrations between maybe 100 vibrations per second, all the way up to maybe 40 50,000 higher for younger kids 80,000 vibrations a second. When we hear a piano and someone plugs that A above middle C that’s 440 back and forth vibrations every second and a vibration is a cycle. And planets are cycles. And with the moon is a is a 13 cycle per year musical tone. But it’s so slow and low frequency. We don’t hear it with our ears. Saturn is three cycles a century, Pluto is four cycles a millennium, but their actual musical notes that instead of hearing with our ears, our selves are attuned to them in in harmonic resonances in our lives dance to them, but it’s still like that’s the band that’s playing. It’s just it doesn’t come through our ears. When I look at a chart and when I work with my students, I train them to find

Forget about the isolated points, I don’t mean forget about them completely. But when we look at a chart, we’re trying to see the hub. I know that’s a metaphor, we’re trying to feel here, the hum, because it’s the hum of a chart that makes us who that contributes to who we are not any one planet in any one sign. When I hit the my astrology told me I’ve never had a successful relationship, because I have a Venus Mars conjunction in the eighth house and that’s blah, blah, blah, blah, I get sick. I mean, I get physically sick because it to me that that’s damaging to a client. And it’s just not necessarily the truth. We get handed down these axioms. And I think I’ve digressed and I’m coming back.

Joe G. Santos 45:46
No, totally. I think that was a fun digression though. And I think like people in the comments seem like very enjoyed it too but…

Rick Levine 45:56
Yeah, question about Pluto retrograde.

Joe G. Santos 46:00
Oh, yes. Let me look. I think it got lost.

Rick Levine 46:06
No, it’s Maria joy. No, no, that’s Saturn conjunct Pluto retrograde.

And, but yeah, someone said, What about Pluto retrograde? It was? And is Pluto Direct or Retrograde? And I assume that question is Pluto Direct or Retrograde? Right now. And right now we’re in a very strange and magical time. Where, where Pluto, and Neptune and Chiron and Saturn and Jupiter and Mars, and Venus and Mercury are all direct granting a six week period. And except when the moon like it just did when it moved into Gemini. Except for two weeks when the moon moves through that half of the sky, all the planets, all the planets are contained within one half of the nodal cycle, very new energy that we have going. But the question about Pluto retrograde, to me is really a question about Retrogrades. In general.

I do not hold the party line here. I see nothing bad about retrograde planets, I don’t see any planets as good or bad. But I see a lot of difficulty that people can have with a retrograde planet. And I think I know why. And it’s not complicated. A planet is retrograde when it’s closer to Earth than it is in any other time in its cycle. You look at a chart,

and Mars,

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Chiron or Eris, they’re all outside the orbit of Earth, if any of them are in opposition to the sun, we’re even within a couple of signs of that opposition. They are retrograde period. Why? Because the Earth is between them in the sun, and therefore they’re closer to Earth than they normally are.

Joe G. Santos 48:13
Right.

Rick Levine 48:13
But if any of those planets are either conjunct the Sun, where within a few signs have conjunct the Sun, they can’t be retrograde

because they’re far side. Now that’s different with the inner planets of Mercury and Venus. Because when they’re conjunct the Sun, because Earth is always farther away. When they’re conjunct the Sun, they can either be retrograde, but that means they’re between the Earth and the Sun. So we’re just coming out of a Venus and Mercury Retrograde phase. And that means that both of them passed between the Earth and the Sun.

And the next time that they’re in conjunction with the sun, they’re going to be all the way on the far side. And they’re going to be really far away, which means they will be direct. And they’ll come all the way around the sun. And again, come between the Earth and the Sun, and they’ll go retrograde again. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a retrograde planet. But there are two important things that happens. One is that it covers territory that is covered before. And this is incredibly important, especially when we’re talking about Pluto right now. And I want to hold that off just for a moment. But it’s about Pluto Venus right now. Right? The second piece though, is that, that there is a concept that’s been kind of largely dropped in astrology. But but it used to be a thing and it’s never it’s it’s wasn’t dropped because it was wrong. It’s just computer programs tend not to show it. And it used to be that you were able to calculate when you hand calculated a chart

And that is a thing.

Or what that was something on your computer, I think

that a thing called distance value, if anyone knows what the distance value is or what that means, plop it in the chatbox. I’m just interested in how much

this term is still around. I’ve talked about it before.

But

but a distance value has to do it’s a number between zero and one. And the same way you have a micron, is there some noise coming in from somewhere? That’s

Joe G. Santos 50:47
Good now?

Rick Levine 50:51
Okay, thanks. Um, the distance value is this. The distance value is a number that shows us how close or far from Earth a planet is.

With the scale, zero to one being as far away as it could be, or as close as it can be.

The concept is like a radio station, you know, imagine you like listening to a particular radio station, and you get in your car and you drive, you’ll reach a certain place where it’s harder to tune for that radio station. And then you’ll reach a place where you can’t find it anymore. You can’t you can’t get it. So planets are like radio stations. They’re like broadcasting information. And if we’re really, really, really, really close to a planet, which shows up as retrograde, that signal is going to be blasting

a basic rule of Natal Chart interpretation that many people miss. But it is so simple and so basic. And it comes from a Jungian concept. And this isn’t his words, it’s my words, but it’s his concept. And it’s basically every planet just wants a voice.

Every planet just wants to be heard.

And when a planet isn’t heard, then it becomes it’s either suppressed or repressed. It’s not and when something isn’t heard, and it has a voice that it needs to speak, that then appears as a projection, we bump into it out there. This is why opposition’s are so often relationship oriented. Because if we have two planets pulling in opposite directions, like a tug of war, creating this tension, let’s say it’s um, Saturn and Mars. I might like the Mars. And so I look at the Mars but then I can see the Saturn transit bumped into people in my life, who get on my case, who slow me down who, you know, rules at me or whatever. But let’s say that I don’t like my natal bars because it scatters my energy. And I become super disciplined, and they become known for whether I’m a musician or an athlete doesn’t matter that become known for how disciplined I am. But they may bump into people who are fiery and feisty, and want to encourage me to do other stuff or whatever. Because Because one planet isn’t getting seen,

Joe G. Santos 53:26
Right

Rick Levine 53:28
What happens when a planet goes retrograde is that it gets so loud, that often early in life, we’re told to shut it up. And and this is something that was much worse 100 500 1000 years ago, why? Because if you grew up on a farm, you know, and your parents were farmers or your or your dad was a, a shoemaker, you know, and you were, you’re a guy, you just were assumed to become part of that shop, and then to become a shoe shoe maker. Now, if you had super active Mercury going, then you want to learn how to read and do books and all and write whatever, tough shit. You had this like you had to live. And that could make you crazy. And if you were a woman, it was even worse, because women were basically brought up and trained to be housewives and then sold a we call it you know, I mean, it’s the whole thing of having, you know, of the process of missing the word of a dowry, you know, of basically paying someone to take your daughter, and then otter is their property. But the point again, is, if that if that person has a really strong Mars and can see how to make things happen, and how to direct people, and live in a world where these guys are doing it, and they’re idiots and this

woman wants to step in and do it, she can’t. And so may end up making a really crazy. And so retrograde planets are difficult for two reasons. But if we understand what those two reasons are, neither of them in this day and age have to be difficult. One of them is that that planets loud, if you ever retrograde Pluto, then yeah, there may be more intensity, more power, more passion,

then someone else has

that energy. How do you somehow find an outlet for it? So it doesn’t become bottled up and stuff? Because that’s when it creates problems.

Joe G. Santos 55:40
Right. Can I…

Rick Levine 55:40
And when that entertain, you can. And then the other piece is that if it goes over territory, it’s been over already. If that’s impacting clients that you have, then all of a sudden, something that just lasts a day or a week or a month, might last months or even years.

Joe G. Santos 55:59
Right. And my question was, if we’re talking about like this Pluto return return as well and talking about like the Pluto of a country, like if we’re going through the Pluto retrograde which will come every now and again,

Rick Levine 56:13
every year, every year for about five months.

Joe G. Santos 56:17
Right? And like as a country, how can the US sort of instead of bottling that Pluto Ness up? How can the US express in a more positive way? Or is that something that we can’t really do? individually?

Rick Levine 56:35
In the last book, Carl Jung wrote before he died, he wrote a book called The Undiscovered self. And in it he said that politicians running around the planet trying to make treaties and peace will never accomplish peace, peace will be found only when peace is found in all the individuals in the world.

Joe G. Santos 56:53
Right

Rick Levine 56:54
What do we do is we contribute to the all the world by making peace and taking care of our own brush fires before they feed into other people’s brush fires that end up, you know, in an armed revolution somewhere. Right?

Joe G. Santos 57:17
Totally.

Well, above that. You did say do you want to talk about Pluto and Venus?

Rick Levine 57:23
I did. But this is my whole thing of thing. cosmically act locally. It’s great that we think about all this cosmic stuff I that I live for this. On the other hand, if you don’t apply the cosmic stuff to your individual lives, why bother?

Um, okay, so

part of this Pluto return is heightened by the fact of all the other energy that has been running through Pluto. While it’s in Capricorn.

We tend to think of aspects as isolated factors to the way we learn astrology. Unfortunately, planets are not just particles, they’re waveforms. Wait a minute, did Rick finish the thought of having a Capricorn moon during this long as Pluto transit? Or did I miss that?

Tell this double Capricorn something please. I’m not sure what you’re asking, did I finish the thought that it? Well the thought is that is that if you take the actual degree, and the moment that Pluto is conjunct your natal moon, for those who have a Capricorn, Moon, something may have big have happened that day or that week. But it’s not about that day or that week, it’s about the two or three year process of coming and going. It’s almost like first you see this black limo driving around the neighborhood, not knowing who it is, but it’s you making you feel kind of nerdy, you know, a little, and you know, and then you wake up in the morning and you find him making coffee in your kitchen. You know, and you know, and you can’t get rid of this character. This is Pluto. And eventually you find him in bed next to you every night. And then, you know, a few years later, as the transit is waning, you know, again, he’s not in your bedroom, but he’s still like the character in your house, you see the shady, you know, kind of figure here and there. And even years later, you can still see him driving around the neighborhood and in the, you know, in the black limo. You know, the point is,

and Ella and Ella and Ella and Ella,

it’s basically not in a given moment that it occurs, because what happens is the faster moving planets create triggers, you know, Saturn and outward those planets are chronic Saturn is Latin for Greek Kronos.

Chronic behavior or a chronic illness is one that has settled in over a long term. Now often someone can die from an acute illness that may only last a day or two. But that but an acute illness that can come and go very quickly, will come and go very quickly unless there are other things going on. And it’s the other things going on that are heavier, the chronic things that sometimes allow a chronic, I’m sorry, that sometimes allow an acute transit to kick off larger scale events. And then the planets work the same way. We have Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto transits, but sometimes it’s a New Moon or, or, or a Venus conjunction or something that happens that basically triggers the cascade of events, even when the aspect itself is not exact. So

here’s the thing with this Pluto return.

Or in fact, even, even, even Pluto in

even Pluto in Capricorn in general, because the Pluto and Capricorn remember, Pluto in Capricorn and aquarius is Pluto. I’m sorry, when Pluto is in Capricorn or Aquarius, and it conjoined Saturn.

That is, when Saturn is at its strongest when it is in when it’s in its domicile. So this recent conjunction of,

of Saturn and Pluto occurred in Capricorn. And the last time there was a Saturn Pluto conjunction in Capricorn was when Martin Luther nailed the Theses on the wall of a church in Germany that basically

created the the the Protestant Reformation and, and the actual

event of him nailing that on, you know, on on the wall of this church, and this is in the 1500s. And he actually did this on in November of let me get this right. It was on.

It was on Halloween, it was on Halloween. In 15. I think it was 1513. I can get the date here just in a real quick second. There it is right there. The date he actually did that was 1517. On Halloween night.

The Saturn Pluto conjunction occurred in January of 1518, only two months away. And so the beginning the kicking off of this particular phase of Pluto that we’re in right now, was Saturn in his own sign, creating a container containing

which is what Saturn in Capricorn does and what Saturn does. And in some ways, the changes that are coming out of this will be historically as big as Martin Luther kicking off the Reformation. But it took you know, 50 100 years before anyone then realized how big this was all going to. I mean, when you’re in the middle of an event, you can’t quite see it. So first we have Saturn and Pluto but not in normal three times a century Saturn and Pluto. This is a once in 500 year event. Then you add to that the fact that the south node is there, and the South Node backed over both Saturn and Pluto. And then you had the fact that Jupiter was there. And then Jupiter swept over Pluto retrograding over it and then went direct over it again. So now we’ve extended this Saturn Pluto event that was on January 25. Incidentally, the day of the Wuhan laboratory announcing the genome of the virus. And the first quote unquote reported mortality that I say reported mortality of the virus was on January I said 20th I meant January 12.

of 2020. But then we had Jupiter go over it and of course these were the explosion dates not only of the

The COVID pandemic or the pandemic of fear, but also magnified by so many other issues, including the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the black lives matter, all of this intertwined in there. So that’s the Jupiter kind of expanding the bubble making it even more. But you see each of these planets, Saturn, and Jupiter, and then eventually the inner planets are all going to come over Pluto and do their thing. And they’re going to come over Pluto and square Uranus, then and over the last few years, everything went over Pluto and squared Uranus. But now because that square is it’s after, they’re all doing it the other way around, and then the Uranus is coming after rather than before. And so what’s happening now is that Saturn has gone over Pluto, and then Saturn squared on and off all last year, Uranus, then Jupiter went over Pluto, and a year ago in January it squared Uranus. Well, right now we have another incredibly crazy rare event. Oh, and I should mention also the fact that there was a Jupiter Saturn conjunction in December of 2020. That was not just the Jupiter Saturn conjunction, it was part of a grand mutation cycle, another once in five century kind of thing. So we’ve had the stacking up of stuff. And into this, we now have a period of time where we had mercury where we had Venus turned direct Venus actually the end of December conjoined Pluto, turned retrograde went back over Pluto. Now turn direct, then we’ll go back over Pluto the third and final time at on the day of the New Moon on March 2. This is a crazy New Moon. Because at that same time, Mars, which has recently moved into Capricorn will actually catch up with because it’s moving faster than Venus, because Venus is still moving slowly coming out of the retrograde and the two of them will conjoined while they’re conjoining Pluto on a New Moon.

And on top of that, we have mercury having just direct retrograded back over Pluto and then direct over it again. So we’ve had Venus and Pluto do three sweeps each over Pluto. And the last time Venus did a direct retrograde direct over Pluto was about 200 years ago. This is not something that happens normally. Then you see when an inner planet makes a three hit. Now we’re back to the retrograde phenomena. Because normally, Mercury will line up with Pluto once a year for about a day.

Except this year, it did it for about a month and a half.

Because the first sweep to the retrograde begin, the second sweep to the retrograde end to the third sweep extends that conjunction over a larger period of time. Venus doing the same Jupiter doing the same last year. So I don’t mind what date you use for the actual Pluto return. If you want to use February 20 of this year, which is the you know, tropical first hit of the three of them. Great.

All I know is that for the last couple of years, even going back to the initial Saturn conjunct in Pluto in January of 2020. Things that have been hidden things that are underworld things that are unconscious, things that have to do with suppression based upon holding on to power. These are all things that have been highlighted. And they continue to don’t have anyone read the news today. But the latest thing is not only did did our fearless leader Donald Trump take cartons of documents that belonged to the US government to mar a Lago. Not only were many of them marked top secret, but now it’s come out that his toilet was often clogged because he would flush papers down the toilet. No, that’s right. I’m not here to re I’m steering clear of political I’m just telling you the event. And that is as plutonic as you can imagine flushing the secret document or flushing documents that you don’t want anyone to see down the toilet and have

Joe G. Santos 1:09:51
very literally

Rick Levine 1:09:53
it’s a literal transit. So, you know, so with all of this stuff with Pluto, you know

I mean, and Pluto returns, we don’t know what happens on it to a human at a Pluto return. Because we don’t live that long. I have to be honest, it’s on my list to do. But I’ve not really delved into

civilizations that have lasted longer, like Rome, for example. What did they go through on their Pluto return? Sometime in the next month or two? When I get to that, I’ll come back with some of that data. And if anyone else wants to do that deep, you know, deep dive,

you know, I’d be open to hearing it from you. And Teresa said, Oh my God, how did you know that? Are you referring to the flushing of the document? It was on the news today. You know, it’s, uh, yeah.

Joe G. Santos 1:10:52
I found it so funny. Because when you said it’s on my list to do you said it right after, right after saying humans don’t live that long. And I was like, Oh, you want to live as long to have a Pluto return yourself. That’s, that rather bold.

Rick Levine 1:11:04
I’m happy with, you know, 70 80 90

Joe G. Santos 1:11:09
I would love to live long enough to have a Pluto return. That’s That’s quite the feat.

Rick Levine 1:11:16
Long enough to have a Pluto return, I’ll be back three times.

Joe G. Santos 1:11:24
So it seems like the best thing to do especially with like, the whole timing thing, because it’s such a long process is that interest you? Watch it, observe it and like, do your best to just live your life as it is like nothing?

Rick Levine 1:11:36
No, it’s true. But Joe, imagine this. I see I sometimes think that Saturn transits are easier to deal with than Pluto transits because of the time distortion that occurs, you see, with with the Saturn transit, even if it’s a direct retrograde direct, and by the way, if you have a Saturn transit that hits three times I’ve heard astrologers get together, someone go, Oh, I got Saturn coming up to my moon and why couldn’t it just be one hit it’s three hits, this gonna last eight months. And, and and all I can say is from observation over the years, I would much rather have a three hit Saturn a difficult Saturn transit than a one hit. Because though when they come sweeping through once, they come through hard and powerful and everything happens at once. Whereas when you get the direct retrograde direct, you have process time, right, it’s the process time, then if you go in and do the work that actually allows the transit to have some positive effect, it’s much more difficult to manage on a one time sweep. But the thing about a Pluto transit.

A Pluto transit is kind of like it’s it’s like surfing a tsunami.

Except that tsunami, which would normally come through in a matter of seconds, is a glacier that’s coming through in a matter of years. You see, if you’re standing on the edge of a glacier, you don’t know that it’s moving.

And yet it’s taking down trees. It’s taking down mountains. It’s basically reforming the land with much greater power than a tsunami. But it’s tsunami happens all at once. And so when you’re surfing that tsunami, and I’m not suggesting that anyone should,

metaphorically, thank you very much. But if you’re surface surfing that tsunami, every moment is like this, correct? Correct? Oh, no, the way just, you’re basically you’re in that balancing motion of always, like, you know, if that’s a Saturn transit is, oh, my God, my boss just called and blah, blah, blah, blah, Oh, crap. I just broke my ankle now how? I mean, the things that happen. And of course, they’re not all necessarily bad. But when they happen, you have to react to them, and they happen at a speed where you can react. Okay. So you’re on that you’re on your surfboard on it on a glacier.

Nothing’s happening.

I guess I can go to sleep.

I don’t, I don’t have to pay attention. It’s nothing’s happening. But what’s happening is so huge, that you don’t see what’s happening moment to moment. So what are the medicine that I would give for someone with any kind of Pluto transit, is the medicine of time transformation is the take and I don’t even mean taking plant medicine, although I’m certainly not against that in right situations. That’s not what I mean. But I mean, take a meditation tablet and say, I need to focus on what’s going on now and compare that what to what went on yesterday and what I want to go on tomorrow, and what was going on last month, and what was going on five years ago. And what these larger changes are and where am I and try to see things from

Your perspective, because yesterday today and tomorrow are not nearly as important in a Pluto transit as last year, this year, next year,

Joe G. Santos 1:15:10
right

Rick Levine 1:15:10
We’re the last three years this year in the next three years. And so we have to shift our focus with Pluto transits because otherwise we get lazy and we don’t think anything’s happening. Because the glacier is basically not moving. But when we’re talking about Pluto, there is one other thing that we really should talk about. And it’s about ego and this comes this it really relates a little bit to the Tibetan Tibetan Book of the Dead.

You see,

Pluto is complete transformation, like like a like a butterfly becoming a caterpillar becoming a butterfly becoming a caterpillar becoming a butterfly etc. There’s nothing apparently that connects the caterpillar and butterfly physically. But obviously we know that when that caterpillar gets in the the chrysalis stage, and that the the outside of the cocoon hardens a bit. We know that the caterpillar dies,

or at least its eyes melt, and its bones and skin disintegrate. And what’s left is just this pool of black brown gotta be something right that used to be a caterpillar

and isn’t yet a butterfly.

This process is normal and natural. And the caterpillar got the post Caterpillar pre butterfly knows exactly what to do to make a butterfly.

Pluto is our process of transformation. Always. Remember, the Phoenix only arises from the ashes of the ruins of destruction, operative words here, ashes, ruins, destruction.

That’s the way that Phoenix rises. But with our egos, there is no way in hell and I use the word hell as a double entendre. Because the caterpillar getting into the cocoon is entering hell, it disintegrates. There’s no way in hell, we would consciously get into the damn cocoon. You could wave the caterpillar at us and we go, hell no ain’t gonna go, that’s gonna kill me, I’ll die.

But the caterpillar that doesn’t have an ego in the way is given the freedom to ride this 2 billion year old lifetime, this flow that is perfectly safe. And so we get so hung up in our identity. We have things that happen to us that say, oh my god, this is who I was, I want i i wanted to be a jazz pianist, more than anything in the world, my whole childhood.

My whole childhood was on that I went to school, I went to Juilliard, I practice and I was really good. And then I broke my index finger.

And I’ll never be the jazz pianist. But see, then, then then there’s this need for transformation. And the real thing about The Tibetan Book of the Dead, it’s really in its current, most current form, the version by law Lama Sogyal Rinpoche, it’s called The Tibetan Book of the living and dying, because we’re always going through that death and rebirth process. And that’s always Pluto. Even if the school teacher that says, No, you can’t write your essay about that. What do you mean, you know, this is something deflates. And you have to change. Pluto is that part of us that goes through death through ego death.

And it’s the roto rooter. That’s, the more we resist, the more Pluto is going to come and get us. And yet if we can develop that awareness. I mean, I’ve heard say that you don’t want to go with the flow only dead fish go with the flow. You know, that may be a smartass way of saying something. And at times it’s true. But when Pluto things come in, and there are bigger things than you, the more you hold on to and the more you fight, the more you’re pulling in harder, more difficult plutonic energy

and the more difficult it’s going to be. So yeah, and I see someone here tight, not Martin Luther King, Martin Luther. Yeah, I was talking about Martin Luther in Germany in 15. I forgot the day to get 15 3015 or 31.

1513 or 1531?

I had to do here a moment to go.

Yeah. Anyhow, not but not Martin Luther King Martin Luther King namesake.

Yeah, it was 1517. Not 1964.

Joe G. Santos 1:20:22
Right? Very different dates.

Rick Levine 1:20:25
Very, very, very different. Okay, so that’s, I think what I have to say.

Joe G. Santos 1:20:36
Oh, no, you’re reading a question.

Rick Levine 1:20:39
No, go ahead.

Joe G. Santos 1:20:40
No, I’m just I was just gonna say. So basically, what you’re saying is just go with the flow. Just live it out. Live your life, and you’re feeling good?

Rick Levine 1:20:48
Well, I, I’d like to say yes.

But no.

Because just going with the flow may be acquiescing to a power that actually needs to have some resistance. Remember, water will flow to the ocean, it’ll get to the ocean. But if you build a dam in the right place, that water can be used to irrigate rice fields, or wheat fields, can feed people or keep people you know, in water, and then it’ll still eventually recycle and still get to the ocean. In fact, a right kind of a dam can make power. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not for damming up rivers, that keel seven, you know, there’s everything here is a trade off. But Saturn, not salmon, Saturn, it blocks a flow for a reason. And so I’m not saying we should just go along with it and go with the flow and have fun, I’m thinking we should pick our battles very carefully. And that we should, it’s almost like that old Kenny Rogers song no one to hold no one to fold, you know.

And in a way that the only way we can really know that though, is by increasing our awareness. And it gets back to that whole idea of getting the larger perspective, not Oh, my God, this just happened, I got a flat tire on my car. And that means I’m not gonna be able to go to the job interview tomorrow, which means everything’s gonna fall apart, because I had everything and bla bla bla bla, no, you got to back up and look at the whole thing. And with Pluto, it’s about as larger perspective as we can get. And so from that standpoint, it’s really important not to get so caught up in whatever the urgency is of the moment, although there’ll be times when the urgency of the moment is so important that if we don’t get into that completely, will die. You know, I’m not saying one or the other. I’m saying it’s about awareness.

Joe G. Santos 1:22:50
Yeah. So you’re even brought up I think you brought up yoga at some point. And that really reminds me on that, because like, sometimes Yoga, you just want to release and you just want to bend into that in the pose and just relax. But then you don’t want to do that when you’re doing a handstand, you’re definitely fall on your face if you just relax on a handstand. So exactly. Flexibility, I guess, or strength depends on the time.

Rick Levine 1:23:15
It depends on the time. And again, remember, you know, the word yoga just came from the yoke of an oxen. And so the oxygen, the oxen has power. But the power of the oxygen is of no use no value. I’m not sure why my video just disappeared. But I’m back

here, that the the the oxen has a tremendous amount of power. And it represents in a way, the power that we have as humans, but it’s by putting the yoke on the oxen. That gives us the ability to plow the field to do the real work. And by the same token, whether it’s asanas or genre yoga, a mental yoga or Karma Yoga, doing yoga, yoga is basically a practice of discipline that creates the ability to harness the power that otherwise is scattered or not there so that we can plow the field. That’s what the real word of yoga or the yoke of an oxen Yeah. 100%. Well, I love that. Is there anything else that you’d like to share?

Enough for now? Maybe, unless

Unless anyone has any pressing, and that’s not depressing, but any pressing?

Joe G. Santos 1:24:40
I think the comments all look really stoked on the yoga metaphor. I feel like that if even thinking about like, because one of the things that I like to think about is always remediation. If you’re like a yoga could be like a good way to like really harness those skills of like knowing when to be flexible and knowing when to harness those strengths.

But yeah, and that actually reminds me of the course that’s coming up the cosmic calendar course which is

Rick Levine 1:25:10
Yes Renstrom

Joe G. Santos 1:25:12
I started I started taking a listen to it because I’m doing some of the the work behind the scenes. And it’s so good, especially for me as a an electional astrologer. Like it’s so much it’s so technical, and you’re always thinking about these, like really tiny degrees and all those things, but Christopher really just makes it like, so simple. And it takes it into like a very poetic and easy way for anyone to understand which I love. And it’s actually open for enrollment and so anyone can go and sign up for the course at astrology. hub.com/cosmic calendar.

Rick Levine 1:25:51
That one word cosmic calendar, one word, cosmic calendar altogether.

Joe G. Santos 1:25:56
Yes. Well, Rick, that was a pleasure. I was honestly so never nervous because I’ll I’ll disclose that now cuz I’m a big fanboy. I’ve been following your podcast for so long. And man, especially the Uranus podcast that you did not too long ago with Chris Brennan that for me, like as a new astrologer, really as a new astrologer, learning modern astrology, getting that look at Uranus. And now Pluto with us has been such a big privilege. So thank you so much for being here with me.

Rick Levine 1:26:32
Well, all I can say is that it was my pleasure. And and although I am a fanboy of Amanda’s

great job for your for your first time. Thank you. And so yeah, no problem with that at all. Pretty, pretty cool.

Joe G. Santos 1:26:51
Awesome. Well, I think that’s it for today, man. And

thank you guys for being here. And I always wanted to say this. Thank you as always for making astrology a part of your life.

Rick Levine 1:27:05
All right.